You season 4 part 2 recap: Wait, who dunnit?

Say it ain't so, Joe.

The back half of You season 4 takes a dark, twisty turn as what we thought we understood about Joe's London holiday unravels as quickly as, well, the man himself. Let's dive in.

Episode 6: Best of Friends

The first episode after our month-long break finds Joe (Penn Badgley) back in his happy place: skulking around in the shadows. He's listening to Rhys (Ed Speleers) on podcasts and following him to campaign events, where he's too absorbed to notice the blond photographer from earlier this season sneakily snapping his picture.

In the end, though, it's Rhys who comes to Joe, waiting in his flat to give him an ultimatum: pick someone to frame as the Eat the Rich Killer or take the blame himself.

Roald (Ben Wiggins) isn't in the running. He absconded to St. Bart's for a holiday, having failed to convince Kate to come with him.

And Kate (Charlotte Ritchie)? That's a sore subject. Joe blames Rhys for making him push her away, and now she's pointedly excluding him from the fundraiser she's holding at Sundry House in Simon's memory.

Phoebe (Tilly Keeper) invites Jjoe anyway, which lets us catch up with the rest of the crew. Adam (Lukas Gage) is downright desperate for money and swaps his pricey car collection for an engagement diamond in the hopes of locking down his meal ticket.

Said meal ticket is having trouble sleeping and insists to Kate that she's being followed. But she's thrilled to see Joe the hero there, leaving Kate to mumble that everyone seems to have forgotten that she pulled Jonathan and Roald out of the basement fire. Preach, girl.

In search of a scapegoat, Joe gets Phoebe to vent about her friends and settles on Connie (Dario Coates), who has no alibi and is up to his eyeballs in booze and drugs.

When he gets Connie alone for a chat, the man's sporting a broken nose from falling in the loo and is looking for a bootie bump (definition not linked for your own good). Joe tries to convince himself that framing Connie will help the man clean up his life.

Adam pops up to ask Joe to keep an eye on Phoebe while he sets his elaborate proposal in motion. Next, he bumps into Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman) at the fundraiser on a date with her classmate Edward (Brad Alexander), the newspaper owner's son. Nadia's star-struck that Joe knows Phoebe, but he blows off her request for an introduction. Rude, Joe.

A spectacularly blue-eyeshadowed Kate isn't pleased to see Joe there and calls him out for sending mixed messages. Internally Joe agrees; he wants to be with Kate, not setting up Connie with Simon's severed ear. Curse you, Rhys!

A passed-out Connie comes to as Joe's about to slip Simon's ear into his pocket and says their talk was the wake-up call he needed to get to rehab, which sparks Joe's sympathy and leaves him looking for someone else to frame.

He also gets stuck watching a handsome shipping heir named Niko cozy up to Kate with an offer to buy Simon's whole art collection and to come by her place later to discuss it.

Honestly, good for Kate. Joe iced her out, and Niko's hot. Of course, Joe sees it all and now I'm worried about Niko. And Kate. And Nadia too, just because she's in the vicinity.

Enter Dawn, the blond photographer (Alison Pargeter). She's working as a cater-waiter for the Sundry House festivities and pulls Phoebe aside to tell her that the police want her escorted to a safe room. Phoebe complies, sweetly blowing off Nadia's request for a selfie. What are you up to, blond photographer?

No good, as it turns out. She padlocks Phoebe into a hotel room with a promise to take better care of her than the police have. "You know me," Dawn insists, bringing up their matching "soul sister" tattoos. Yikes.

She tells Phoebe that Adam's broke, unfaithful, and using her as a meal ticket. When she realizes Phoebe doesn't have a tattoo, she offers to carve a new one for her with the really big knife she produces from her bag.

Thankfully, Nadia's alerted Joe, who tells Kate, Adam, and the police in attendance, and everyone quietly rushes to find Phoebe. Joe overhears her talking to Dawn through the door, and when he knocks, Phoebe brightly informs him that she's with "the paparazzi lady I only speak to through the television."

Phoebe realizes Dawn's in the grips of erotomania, a delusion that makes you believe someone you've never met is in love with you. She talks Dawn into letting Joe in, then wrestles the knife away from her, screaming in frustration as the police break down the door. In the chaos, Joe slips Simon's ear into Dawn's bag, and hey presto, framing accomplished!

The next day, Joe's disgusted to see that Rhys is using Dawn's arrest to call for more mental health care. I mean, yes, let's absolutely do that! But maybe with a different mayor.

Nadia, meanwhile, is starting to get suspicious about Joe. What are the odds that he's an outsider who's coincidentally enmeshed in all this drama? That's not how she'd write that story.

Adam, meanwhile, launches his elaborate picnic-and-private jet proposal, but Phoebe's done being kind to wolves pretending to be lambs. She tells him to get back to her once he's gotten all his problems sorted.

Time for Kate's rendezvous with Niko! They're just starting to kiss when he gets a text from Kate's father, and she realizes that Tom Lockwood was really behind the purchase of Simon's art.

Joe watches from his flat as she kicks out Niko, then he heads straight to her place. She tells him they can leave the people they used to be in the past as long as they promise to be honest with each other moving forward. It's enough for Joe, and they tumble onto the couch together.

But when he gets back to his flat, Rhys is waiting with his next demand: get rid of Kate's father.

Bookbindings

• Excellent misdirection, show! I truly thought Dawn was on to Joe's real identity, but nope. She just picked the wrong person to fixate on.
• Of course Joe's quoting Charles Bukowski at the top of the episode. Crow all you want about not putting any white men on your syllabus, but we know where your heart lies, Joe.
• Two things to note: Madonna is Phoebe's "very good friend," and Nadia's red-eyed raccoon sweatshirt is incredible.

Episode 7: Good Man, Cruel World

Buckle up, friends. This episode's a doozy.

Joe and Kate are on their first real date! She calls him out for getting caught up in his own internal monologue, and yes, I did immediately think of That Scene with the Hot Priest in Fleabag. (If you don't know what I mean, oh my God, you have an amazing two seasons of television waiting for you.)

They jokingly/not-jokingly talk about a future together, including kids, charitable contributions, and a rare bookstore. She also teases him about his terrible taste in take-out from Tandoori Traditions, but Joe shrugs and says he's a creature of habit.

Alas, one of those habits is murder, and Rhys is forcing him to make his next victim Tom Lockwood. Joe treads carefully when Kate tells him that her father's coming to town, suggesting she bring her new boyfriend along to dinner for moral support. "Classic rom-com set up. Hopefully it doesn't end in death," he voice-overs.

Speaking of genre tropes, Nadia's still puzzling over how obvious it is for someone with erotomania to be the Eat the Rich Killer. Wouldn't it be better to make it some average Joe? Big LOL there. Edward says someone like Professor Moore would be a better twist, then lightly suggests that Nadia could shag him to get his secrets. She's upset that he'd bring up something she told him in confidence and storms off.

Still, it gets her thinking, and she visits Joe's office on the pretense of asking about her story. Joe shuts her down by telling her he got lost on page 15. She asks him a detail about her plot, and based on his answer, it's clear that he hasn't read it. God, I hope he doesn't kill this sweet, smart girl.

At dinner, Kate introduces her father (Greg Kinnear, in a delightful bit of casting) to Jonathan. Tom leans close to say that he's looking forward to getting to know… Joe.

Yep, this charming, affable master of the universe knows exactly who his daughter's dating, leaving Joe quietly freaking out while Tom and Kate discuss that time they tried to get Barbara Streisand to adopt a rescue pit bull puppy.

For the dessert course, a server wheels out a model of the Katherine Lockwood Museum, slated for NYC's Lower East Side. Tom says she can showcase his private collection alongside the smaller artists she'd like to highlight. Kate's overwhelmed and excuses herself from the table, leaving Joe alone with Tom.

He asks about Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti). Then he asks if Joe's ever killed anyone. Then he tells Joe that he'll meet the real Tom if he hurts Kate. Then then he asks about Rhys.

Joe realizes that the enemy of his enemy is his frenemy, so he starts thinking about ways to dig up dirt on Rhys so Tom can handle the rest.

While Kate considers Tom's offer, Phoebe's spiraling. She's self-medicating and convinced that everyone in her life is out to get her. Kate tries to get her to check herself into a mental health facility, but Adam turns up — out of money and options — and offers to drive Phoebe to the hospital. Against Kate's wishes, Phoebe agrees.

But by the end of the episode, we'll be as horrified as Kate is to learn that Adam actually took Phoebe out for a night of debauchery, and now they're engaged. Dammit, Adam, we were (mostly) rooting for you! I'm starting to think these two aren't actually the Sherry and Cary of the season.

Back at Joe's flat, he's set up a hidden camera to capture Rhys confessing to crimes, but Rhys senses what's up and turns it off. Then he produces Marienne's passport and says he'll kill her if Joe doesn't off Tom. So uhhhhhh Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) didn't get away after all?

After Rhys leaves, Kate arrives. She admits that it was her and not her father who made the decision that left all those kids with cancer. She tells Joe that she'll never not be Katherine Lockwood. Joe reminds her that she was only 19 at the time, and she's done so much good since then.

Although he's worried about what killing Tom might do to Kate, he invites the man to his office, where he's laid down tarps. Well that's not suspicious at all! He tries to distract Tom with a first-edition Winston Churchill book as he reaches for his knife, but Tom's affably in control of everything.

Tom says he planted a story about Rhys fabricating part of his memoir to chase him to the country so Joe — whom he suspects of killing Love Quinn — can get him alone to kill him. He writes Rhys's location in the Churchill book (viewer, I gasped) and leaves.

Nadia's concerns about Joe have progressed enough that she cons her way into his flat and searches until she finds a book on the history of torture and a big golden key hidden in a hollowed-out rare edition of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This is what we call foreshadowing!

While she's there, Edward sends an apology message along with photos that the newspaper obtained from Dawn's flat showing Joe with a steady stream of Tandoori Tradition bags.

This sends Nadia to the restaurant, then into the boarded-up building across the street. Inside, she finds a door with a modern lock that opens with Joe's key. Ruh roh.

And it's about to get a lot more ruh roh because when Joe tracks Rhys down at his country hideway, a confused Rhys claims not to know him.

Joe overpowers him and ties him to a chair, busting out some truly gnarly testicular torture to get Rhys to tell him where Marienne is. Rhys screams that he doesn't know Joe or Marienne, and in a rage, Joe chokes the life out of him.

But we know where Marienne is: in Joe Goldberg's favorite book cage, staring in shock at Nadia.

And standing next to Rhys' tortured body is… Rhys.

Bookbindings

• Ummmm what????

Episode 8: Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

It's time to find out exactly how unhinged Joe is.

We learn most of the details thanks to a fairytale bedtime story that Marienne imagines telling Juliette (Dallas Skye). The fox captured the nightingale in the train station by drugging her coffee when he lifted her necklace, and she wakes up tied to a chair in his pre-Jonathan Moore flat.

Joe says he wants to give their relationship another chance as we cut to the You title card done in a black and white sketch style instead of the usual blood-filled letters.

Thanks to Marienne's flashbacks, we see the extent of Joe's fixation on Rhys. He read his memoir well before Nadia mentioned it to him in the first episode of the season, and he obsessively watched Rhys' video walking tour of London.

Marienne puts up a good fight, avoiding Joe's drugged water so she can try to escape when he stuffs her into a crate to move her into the cage in the abandoned building. But he subdues her, breaking her arm in the process, and she's been trapped there the whole time Joe was starting his life as Jonathan Moore.

As Marienne pleads with him to let her go home to her daughter, Joe screams and smashes his forehead against the glass. Yiiiikes.

As Rhys' audiobook drones in the background, Joe calmly says, "I'm not Joe." And when he smiles, there's no trace of the sly, funny charm on display in the first half of the season. He's pure monster.

Time jump. The cage is full of empty take-out Indian containers, and Marienne dreams of being back with her daughter. She's in a homemade sling and refuses to look at Joe when he brings her food. But this time, he also brought her painkillers he swiped from Adam, and she realizes how easy it would be for her to relapse.

"He's gonna break me. He's gonna win," she tells dream-Juliette in despair. Dream-Juliette reminds her that she's strong, so the next time Joe brings food, she forces herself to be friendly.

Joe again informs her that he's not Joe and says he's keeping her in the cage until Joe comes back to kill her. Yeah, that's another yikes from me, dawg.

Time speeds up as we watch Marienne pace and pace and pace. Drink and eat. Wait. Flex her broken arm. Hold the unopened painkiller bottle. Make origami with the takeout bags.

Her arm gets stronger. Her food and water dwindle. She's alone.

She can't conjure dream Juliette anymore.

Realizing she's been left to starve to death, the rage comes, followed by the tears, followed by hallucinations of birds and flickering lights and her daughter's voice.

And then Nadia.

I am so scared for both of these women.

But now we're back with Joe and dead Rhys and hallucination Rhys, who I'm gonna call Reese moving forward because, as we'll soon find out, this Reese is pieces of Joe. And Reese's pieces are the very worst of him.

Joe mutters that he's just going crazy for a little bit, but Reese says Joe's been going crazy since he broke Marienne's arm and banged his head.

Wait, since he kidnapped her and tried to have a relationship chat.

Wait, since he killed Love and abandoned Henry.

Whatever. Joe doesn't have time to track his many missteps. He's got a body to bury.

But disposing of Rhys doesn't get rid of Reese. Who, as I'm thinking about it, never interacted with Joe around other people. I'M SO DISAPPOINTED IN MYSELF. I watched Fight Club. I watched Mr. Robot. I watched every g.d. season of Dexter. We had a faux Rhys all along!

To prove that he's not cracking up, Joe watches the hidden camera footage, which reveals that he's just shouting into thin air before leaving to torture and murder a complete stranger.

A few helpful flashbacks show us that the show never cheated. We even see Adam asking who Joe's talking to when he's having a conversation with Reese at the dinner table. The only time Joe was around Rhys was at Simon's funeral, and that was from a distance.

In conclusion, Joe is "full fat, extra sugar, deep-fried f---ing insane," Reese says. Joe poured all the darkness he hated into a vessel he admired, leaving Reese to do his dirty work.

This means Joe actually committed all the murders in the flashbacks that we thought were Rhys framing him. Roald was right! #JusticeForRoald #OkayNotReally And yes, it turns out that the real Eat the Rich Killer is an erotomaniac after all.

Joe weeps as he admits to himself what he did. Reese tells him this situation is unsustainable (uh, ya think?) and Joe needs to admit what he is in order to remember where he stashed Marienne, who's probably really hungry by now.

Rhys is no longer Joe's antagonist, which means we get our first, "Hello, you" directed at Kate. GIRL, YOU'RE IN DANGER. They make plans to go to Adam and Phoebe's ill-advised engagement party, and Reese reminds Joe that he can have Kate forever if he just cleans up his Marienne mess.

Speaking of, Marienne forbids Nadia from calling the police because she's afraid Joe will escape like he always does, leaving him free to come after her and Juliette. So she and Nadia make plans to get him dead to rights, allowing the police to lock him up forever.

Nadia slips into class late, looking distracted and scrolling through her phone behind her book. Joe notices, and Reese tells him she's trouble.

Protect. Nadia. At. All. Costs.

Joe asks her to hang back, and she lies that she's feeling anxious because of her drama with Edward. Joe buys it, but Reese doesn't, and how terrifying that Reese is now Joe's homicidal Jiminy Cricket.

Kate finds Phoebe drinking champagne outside a dress shop and yet again tries to get her to check herself into the hospital. Phoebe's not interested and confides that she and Adam are actually getting married at the engagement party. She brushes off Kate's suggestion of a prenup, and Adam shows up to shoo Kate away.

Kate begs Joe to be the only sane person in her life at Phoebe's wedding (oh, girl), and Joe agrees, then gets back to tearing apart his flat for clues about Marienne's location.

He eventually finds the key inside the Jekyll and Hyde book, which really does feel too on the nose for someone as pretentious as Joe (even during a disassociative break). Then we see Joe's original copy of Rhys' biography, which is dog-eared and marked up to hell, with one whole page blacked out to reveal only "hi, joe." This might be the most unsettling visual You has ever shown.

Joe keeps pawing through that shelf and finds the vial he used to drug Marienne, along with a box of Rhys trophies, including the London walking tour route — a route that includes Tandoori Traditions. He heads there to check it out at the same time that Nadia returns to explain her plan to Marienne.

So she's inside when Joe spots the boarded-up building and unlocks the door. We cut to credits, but this is Netflix, so let's keep rolling, shall we?

Bookbindings

• It's so damn smart of You to show Joe through his victim's eyes. His sense of self is wildly unreliable, and what a gut check it is to see him as Marienne does. Also, I just knew her storyline in the season premiere was too unresolved to be the final word on the matter.
• Dear God in heaven, please let You have written Joe to be extra charming and relatable in the first episodes of the season just to make this reveal even more damning for the audience. I'm sure I wasn't the only one softening toward the literal serial killer there for a while.
• Can we take a moment to appreciate the actors and showrunners doing interviews about the whodunit of the first half of the season when they knew this filthy little twist was lurking in the back half? Well played, Sera Gamble and Company.

Episode 9: She's Not There.

Who's ready for a wedding? Not Phoebe, as it turns out.

But first, Joe finally found Marienne! He's horrified and apologizes, and she nervously steers him away from the tunnel where Nadia's hiding. He leaves her with the sandwich he had on him, plus a book and pencils to make up for almost starving her to death.

Now that he knows where Marienne is, he plans to see Kate one last time, release his captive, and flee the country. Sure, Jan. I'm sure that'll all work out juuuuuust fine.

After Joe's gone, Nadia rushes out to beg Marienne to let her call the police, but Marienne would rather kill Joe herself. Nadia agrees to drug him and bring him to her. Ladies, I am begging you to just call the cops.

Alas, Nadia wasn't cut out for crime and is arrested with a syringe kit and a big ol' knife bundled into her red-eyed raccoon sweatshirt. She's eventually released and meets Edward outside of the police station, where he's been nervously lurking with the ketamine she requested. But is it too late for her to save Marienne?

Let's put a pin in that because right now, our presence is requested at the wedding of Adam Pratt and Lady Phoebe Borehall-Blaxworth.

Before the ceremony, Kate overhears Adam planning to aggressively franchise Sundry House with Phoebe's money. But Phoebe, who's ingested a whole pharmacy worth of drugs, refuses to listen to Kate's warning.

She asks Joe to talk sense into Phoebe while she distracts Adam, and it almost works. But Adam catches Joe mid-heart-to-heart with Phoebe and has him and Kate escorted out.

As Joe walks Kate back to her flat, he prepares to say goodbye to her. He reminds her that she's a good person and says she changed him the way opening a window changes a dark room.

She's overwhelmed by his words, and he kisses her goodbye, promising to call her once he's taken care of a few things. Reese tells him he's a fool for not murdering away all his problems so he can stay with Kate.

At Sundry House, Adam — wearing a truly vile ringmaster coat — marries Phoebe, who immediately regrets it. She struggles to breathe, grabbing at the neckline of her dress, and ends up wandering the streets in the midst of a psychotic break. Her darling husband has her committed and gleefully takes control of her assets. Definitely not the Sherry and Cary!

We find all this out when Kate explains the situation to her father the next day. He already knew about it, of course, and pivots to ask her to embrace her destiny and take over his company. Kate looks like she's starting to waver.

Ever the proactive parent, Tom hires a team to tie up Adam for what he thinks is some kinky sex but is in fact his execution. (He realizes what's happening when the trio ignores it when he says "sweet potato," his safe word.)

When Kate reads the news, she realizes exactly what happened and confronts Tom. But her dad is done wasting time and tells Kate that he's controlled every aspect of the independent life she thought she built for herself. Every internship, every job, every place she lived, every lawsuit that was dismissed… all Tom. She's his greatest investment, and it's time for her to come back into the fold. Kate's staggered by the revelation.

Okay, back to Joe. When he brings Marienne breakfast, she asks him to check her phone for news about Juliette. (It's outside the cage and is still powered on somehow.) Her text history is full of weeks' worth of worried messages from Beatrice, who's watching Juliette.

Joe shoots off a text, and Beatrice types back that everyone thinks Marienne relapsed and abandoned Juliette, who will be living with her grandmother from now on. Marienne is devastated to lose her daughter and begs Joe to just kill her.

It leaves Joe so unsettled that he leaves and takes some of the tranquilizers Kate took from Phoebe, silencing Reese and allowing him to sleep. Sleep and dream.

First, he dreams that he accidentally poisons Marienne by giving her coffee with peanut oil (gone but not forgotten, Benji!), but he can't get into the cage to save her.

He then finds himself in his flat with Gemma (Eve Austin), who's put out that Joe didn't, well, ask her to put out before killing her. She laughs at the thought of Joe actually saving Marienne and refuses to give him the key, scoffing that he's not willing to do what needs to be done.

Next, Joe's in a classroom with rows of women whispering, "He killed her." At the podium to read Bluebeard's Castle is Guenivere Beck (Elizabeth Lail). "You," she greets Joe before calling him pathetic and swallowing the key he's looking for. How delightful to see his OG stalkee!

Next up is Love, who reminds Joe that everyone he claims to love ends up dead, whether he intends it or not. Instead of the key, she gives him the gun, holding it to his head and reminding him who really needs to die to end this cycle.

Joe wakes up knowing what he has to do: free Marienne and kill himself. When Reese realizes what he's decided, he begs Joe not to sacrifice his future with Kate over the broken toy that is Marienne.

It looks like Reese is going to get his wish. Joe returns to the basement cage to find Marienne sprawled on the ground, having taken the painkillers he left her for her broken arm. In light of this turn of events, Reese suggests it's time for Joe to put him in the driver's seat.

Bookbindings

• Oh my God, Joe. Sweet potato.

Episode 10: The Death of Jonathan Moore

We've reached the final episode of the season. Will Joe weasel out of consequences yet again?Let's find out together.

Joe honors Marienne's written request that he leave her body where she'll be found to give Juliette closure, dressing her and placing her on a park bench.

He then leaves to teach his class — how is he finding time to keep up with assignments and grading amid all the murder??? — during which news breaks that Rhys Montrose has been found dead in the woods with DNA evidence on his body.

Joe dismisses class early and does his best to ignore Reese as he makes his final preparations, but it's Kate who pulls him away. She's drunk and upset about Rhys' death. She'd suspect her father was behind it, but she says he keeps his bodies hidden unless there's some reason not to. At this, Reese sends Joe a meaningful glance.

Here, she fills Joe in on what growing up with her father was like. He chased off all her boyfriends, and he obsessively tracked her phone records, her sexual history, her menstrual cycle. And now he's taking credit for all of her achievements.

"He owns me," she sobs, even asking if her father sent Joe to her. LOL definitely not. And for once, Joe and Reese are in agreement: Tom's got to die. Joe ignores Reese's suggestion that the two of them reintegrate, choosing to remain separate and in charge.

How do you kill a near Illuminati-level billionaire? Well, start by texting him from his daughter's phone to set up a meeting, then sneak into his private airplane hangar.

Tom's perfectly calm when he spots Joe, even turning his back on him at one point. It's all Joe (and Reese) need to pounce, and Tom wakes up chained to a chair. (Seriously, how have Joe's shopping habits not gotten him into trouble?)

Joe makes the mistake of leaving Tom ungagged, and of all his victims, I really believe that Tom might be the one with the best chance of talking himself free. He's so persuasive, so reasonable, telling Joe that he wants only the best for Kate.

But the early return of Tom's bodyguard forces Joe to stab the guy in the jugular, ruining his chance of making it look like Tom committed suicide.

Now Tom's starting to sweat, but he makes a tempting offer: Joe can return home as Joe Goldberg, clean as a whistle with Tom's money paving the way. It's a nice little bookend to the season: one bad man sets Joe up with a new identity in the premiere, and another offers to let him reclaim his original self in the finale.

Tom finally gets nervous when Joe picks up the duct tape, perhaps realizing that he's about to be cut off from his greatest weapon. But Joe doesn't use it on Tom's mouth; he wraps it around the plastic bag he slips over Tom's head.

Reese celebrates the kill as Joe breaks Tom's banking code, transferring money to the bodyguard's account so it looks like he's the one who killed Tom. Joe hides the guard's body and leaves Tom to be found dead. Now all that's left is for Joe to unalive himself, and the killings will stop.

Joe stoically walks along the Royal Victoria Dock Bridge as Reese talks and talks, trying to change Joe's mind. He says everybody sees a bad person when they look in the mirror, but Joe replies, "I think I've killed a lot more people."

When Kate calls, Joe tosses his phone into the water and finally admits the truth: if he stays with her, he will end up killing her. No amount of love makes a difference. He's too damaged, and it all ends the same. Personal growth! Yay… I think.

This is when Reese realizes that he's what Joe hates, and he begs for his life, for Joe's life. Joe cries as he hugs Reese before throwing him off the bridge and following him into the water.

In a voiceover, Joe tells us that he's no different than everyone who jumps and regrets it halfway down. In the murky depths, Joe thinks of Kate, then goes further back to his younger self, then to the child he was.

"All I've ever wanted is to love and to be loved completely," he says as his vision starts to fade. "I should have fought harder. I was born to give you that. That's all that matters. You. Just you."

And it all goes dark.

Back on land, Nadia's still trying to catch Joe. She fills Edward in on everything, and he swipes all the info on Rhys and the Eat the Rich Killer from his dad's newspaper. They pull an all-nighter, during which her eyeliner remains perfect.

And here's where we learn that since they didn't manage to kill Joe, Marienne executed Plan B by taking beta blockers to slow down her heart, making Joe think she was dead. After he left her body on the bench, Nadia rushed in with what I assume is a syringe full of adrenaline to revive her. Also, the person Joe was texting with was Nadia, not Beatrice. Marienne hasn't lost custody of Juliette after all.

Edward is stunned at Nadia's awesomeness, but she's not satisfied and suggests they return to Joe's flat to search for a souvenir box of evidence, despite the danger it poses to her and Edward both. I AM NERVOUS.

Meanwhile, Joe survived his suicide attempt and wakes up in a hospital to find that Reese is gone, but Kate is there. Not wanting to lie anymore, he tells her that he's killed people, and he tried to kill himself.

Kate, in turn, tells him that she's pretty much stepped into her father's shoes as the heir to his empire. She covered up the DNA evidence Tom left on Rhys' body implicating Joe, and she tells Joe that although they're both capable of terrible things, they can keep each other good.

Joe says he thought of her the whole time he was in the water, and she replies, "I love you too." Then he tells her everything, starting with his real name.

At Joe's flat, Edward keeps watch outside while Nadia searches his bookshelves. They're cutely bickering about who's the better student when she finds his Rhys trophy box. She takes pictures and hustles out to meet Edward at the car.

But he's not there. Joe is, out of the hospital and ready to terrify Nadia. He casually grabs her phone and deletes all the photos, saying, "Figures that you'd be the one."

And then Taylor Swift's "Anti-Hero" plays as we get a rundown of where we're leaving our players in the final moments of the season.

After Adam's death, Blessing (Ozioma Whenu) and Sophie (Niccy Lin) bought Sundry House, making it a virtual watering hole in the metaverse.

Roald shot a friend on a German hunting trip but his family helped him get away with it.

Connie lasted nine days in rehab.

Phoebe moved to Thailand to be the best dang English teacher to children there. Good for her. May she thrive.

And unbeknownst to Joe, Marienne is also thriving in her Parisian flat with Juliette, a frown crossing her face as she reads a news story about Joe Goldberg surviving his killer wife to find new love with Kate.

It was easy for a clean-shaven Joe to move back home. All you need is Kate plus a cybersecurity team, a squadron of publicists, scrubbed search results, hacked news archives, and bribes to the Madre Linda chief of police. Easy peasy.

He and Kate are in a majestic New York City apartment giving a charming joint interview where they talk about his troubled late wife and their new philanthropic efforts. (Joe brushes aside the issue of a DNA mix-up involving some toes).

But we have one more flashback before Joe can move into his virtuous future. Back in London, we see that he slit Edward's throat and handed Nadia the knife, explaining that the police will find his Rhys box in her bedroom and believe that she killed Edward to hide her crimes. Sure, she can try to tell them Joe did it, but they won't believe her. She chose not to speak in her own defense and has remained silent from prison.

In the present, Joe stares out of the window at the gorgeous view of Central Park, but it's Reese's face reflected back in the glass. Then he rejoins Kate.

"She's here to change the world," he tells the journalist with a satisfied smile. "I'm just here to help."

Bookbindings

• If you don't grow, you rot. We witnessed plenty of growth this season, but we also saw some terminal stagnation. Then again, some of the growth wasn't in the healthiest direction either. Such are the conflicting lessons of You.
• This is the second You finale to end with a T-Swift needle drop; the season 3 season-ender featured "Exile." Despite Penn Badgley's insistence that Joe's not a Taylor fan, what are the odds of a season 5 cameo?
• Speaking of season 5, a renewal hasn't been announced yet, but we really do need one more batch of episodes to finish this story. Joe's reabsorbed his dark side, and now that he's found that balance and has all of Kate's resources at his disposal, what horrors is he capable of? Plus, he spontaneously bought a bookshop. We're ready to come full circle.
• Poor, poor Nadia. That smart, brave girl is the true tragedy of the season for me.
• What did you think, You fans? How'd you do with the big twist in these final episodes? Hit the comments and sound off!

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